OK, so sometimes while browsing Abandonia I'd notice these games called 7 Days a Sceptic, 5 Days a Stranger, and 6 Days a Sacrifice. I never downloaded them, though, as they seemed pretty morbid. Or... nah, don't remember why.

Either way, after discovering Zero Punctuation and realizing that Yahtzee is also the guy behind the games above, aka the Chzo Mythos, I just had to try them out. OK, so 5 Days was a bit creepy, but manageable. 7 Days was a bit morbid, but frankly I couldn't even be bothered to finish it, mostly because it felt very tedious.

But 6 Days a Sacrifice... God, this was something else. Incredibly creepy just about from the beginning. I've currently gotten nearly to the end, and to be frank, I don't know if I'll even complete the game, or more on to the last installment, Trilby's Notes. The suspense and fear you get from playing that game is just awesome. I seriously found myself scared of entering rooms and turning corners because I was afraid of what'd happen when I did. In fact, and I never thought this'd be possible, I even encountered a line that displaced the 'the ship has a new captain' line and scene from 7 Days a Sceptic as the creepiest ever.:

spoiler:

When the hero wonders if he's hallucinating or something and asks Janine if she's noticed the clean, high-tech subterranean corridor gradually, over the course of several days, magically turning into a disused stone corridor full of blood, and she answers 'isn't it always like that?'.

Brrrrrr.

Heartily recommended. But play 5 Days first, then 7 Days. They're meant to be played in that order.

Well, basically those are games that exists long ago, and either the publisher and things no longer exist, or the situation is so embigous and lost thru time that no one can claim it. There are also things that the original company would release it for free since th games are so old and you can't really sell it now.

Eitherway it is basically things that no one supports, and no one cares.

It is fun games really, but it is sometimes also sad. Some of those publishers were one great game companies, and they are no more. For an old fart like me, its like reliving lost time of my childhood or something.

I've read about 7 days and 5 days, but never really got interested into them. Since I am looking for some good adventure games, I suppose I'll give this one a shot! Thanks for the recommendation, Dagobahn!

Abandonia Reloaded is made exclusively for freeware games while the classic Abandonia is for abandonware. By the way, what do you other abandonia-users think of the new layout? It's definately not as good as the old one in my opinion.

I've played them all from start to finish. They are awesome games, but DO NOT play them at night. I made that mistake with two of the games and never finished them on the first try because of it. Now that was something like three years ago. I started playing them again last year, during the day this time, and managed to play through 5, 6 and 7 days as well as Trilby's Notes. They just keep getting better and more intense by the game.

Also, if anyone likes adventure games that aren't that much of horror and gore than Yahtzee's, you need to play the Ben Jordans. I am hooked to those games

"Our posturings, our imagined self-importance,
the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe,
are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.
In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."
- Carl Sagan

That's the order he made them, but the game timeline makes it:
5, Trilby's Notes, 7, 6

"Our posturings, our imagined self-importance,
the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe,
are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.
In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."
- Carl Sagan

Just finished 5 Days. Won't say it's particularly scary, and the plot, when you look at it at the end goes fairly average from the average novel/horror movie perspective. But the presentation and handling of the story was spectacular! The puzzles are easy enough to get, not entirely far-fetched and clues aren't ample, but sort of rewarding.

Overall, I've found 5 Days a charming game, that looks completely like it came from some big shot gaming company in the early 90s. Have started 7 Days now, and I like what I see.

Finished 7 Days - it's awesome! I was a little disconcerted at the sci-fi theme and the hackeneyed ghost-on-spaceship plot, but like before - the story's presentation, characters, plot design - everything is top-notch. The environments were sort of boring, compared to the 5 Days, though.

The chase sequences and

spoiler:

William's room!

were the only parts I found scary, although I would have preferred if Trilby's tale had been kept ambiguous.

Time for 6 Days, now!

EDIT: My bad, Trilby's Notes is the third in the series. Looks like I'll do that one first.

Trilby's Notes is weird in that it completely turns around the story of the game, that will either impact you, or make you go "meh", like it did for me. The text parser interface took some getting used to, and while the second half was good, the setting the character into the plot could have used some work. Most of the time you are like "WTF?" until about half the game, when you've gone used to everything. Loved the flashback scenes, though.

Okay, time for the biggie that Dagobahn is so scared of. Let us see how it can stand the might of the Sabretooth!

Gotten started on Trilby's Notes, but as I said, it's a gory game and I don't like those.

spoiler:

The part where you had to draw the blinds of the media woman's window to have lightning bolts illuminate her body was interesting, but you really did see it coming. It'd have been far better if you didn't expect her to be dead, for then to see the body (like, if he was in her apartment to search it or something and not expecting her to be home. The second she failed to open the door, I knew she was dead).

The part with the dead body and the diary going from 'unsuspecting to OMG we can't escape to My partner's dead to Awww... it hurts...' is good, but not exactly creative. It drove the story forward, though, in letting you know that you're currently in the future or something, and that there are humans there, as opposed to you having been thrown into some kind of demon world. And, of course, whenever I come across a scene where someone's gotten out a notebook and written 'it hurts' while bleeding to death, it reminds me of a certain Monthy Python scene.

That game machine in the cafeteria with all the wires ripped out and the screen still flashing all white was creepy, though.

Quote:

spoiler:

William's room!

spoiler:

'I'm sure I saw him. Only he wasn't our captain any more.'
'What do you mean?'
'The ship has a new captain, Dave' [enter murderer, who cuts him down from behind]

'I'm sure I saw him. Only he wasn't our captain any more.'
'What do you mean?'
'The ship has a new captain, Dave' [enter murderer, who cuts him down from behind]

That one? Seriously creepy.

I'll say this, that:

spoiler:

Actually, I was talking about William Taylor's bizarre room, with all the severed body parts and blood and stuff, but ALL of the dream sequences I've seen, in all four of the games, have been some of the most ****ing scariest I've seen in video games. Wierdest thing is, no matter how many dreams you see, you still can't guess one when it's coming!

Trilby's a gory game, which is somewhat disconcerting, and not particularly scary, but I would still **** my pants if I was Trilby. I love some of the scenes where you're just walking around and something wierd happens, like Trilby's sprite is replaced by John DeFoe's, or when Trilby somehow appears in Cabadath's (sp?) House.

The best part was where I got out of bed, got attacked by Janine, got back into my room, saw the crack under the other door pulsate blue, went through it and found myself in the 5 Days mansion, where I got attacked and killed by Janine. I had my character wake up, and thought 'phew, just another one of those strange dream sequences'... then I realized the doorframe was still pulsating.

Haha, I only got killed once by Janine, just to check out what happens if she does get you. I was expecting death. 6 Days was a lot easier than the previous games, prolly because the environments, puzzles and problems were smaller and simpler.

And BTW, I didn't find it as creepy as you had described. Janine's line, the pulsating door/chase sequence and the montage of characters near the end were sort of creepy. Add to that the staircase scene where Malcolm's robe gets bloodied, but I didn't find it a whole lot scarier than the earlier games. Sorry.

Have played Art of Theft extensively now, and really love and recommend it. The idea of a stealth-based platform game is great and well-implemented, and lots of fun. The feeling you get from sneaking around without getting is caught is great, and finding new ways to foil traps while testing out the new abilities you achieve is wonderful. However, it's one of those 'wonderful game with lots of things that tick me off' titles, like Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike was. List of grievances:

While this is just a platform game and thus isn't required to make sense, I'd prefer it if the AI had some sort of... AI. You know, reacting to things around it, especially alarms going off. If the rest of the guards actually changed their behaviour when alarms went off or when, for example, someone noticed an unlocked door or a missing painting, it'd be far better in my eyes. Alarms, as said, should be especially deadly to you as they'd greatly up the alert status of guards and perhaps add a timer to police arrival or something. Implementing this through difficulty settings would probably be the best way to handle it.

Some key setups and combos are simply weird. In the heat of action, it's all too easy for me to fail to remember that in order to drop down to a lower level rather than up to a higher one, you have to hit Down+Space, not Space+Down. Hitting these two keys in the wrong order means you're going up, often right into the face of a camera, laser, or guard.

Except for the cases with the lasers, there's no real penalty for not succeeding at a puzzle. Safes can still be opened after you've foiled an attempt, and you can't foil an attempt at lock-picking at all.

The 'cut a wire' puzzle ticks me off as it's often seemingly just a matter of guesswork and trial and error more than an actual puzzle.

The various levels of the little mini-games (the safe-cracking, lock-picking, and alarm-foiling) should be a bit more varied, with new levels adding new little challenges. There's untapped potential here.

The way some of the missions are made is just strange, and annoying. For example, in one mission you're confronted with three notes with random numbers, and are then told to add them together for a three-digit code. This means that every time you re-do the mission, you have to add together three numbers, and these are sometimes not easily done without writing them down or using a calculator, making the process pretty tedious. Having the numbers be non-random and not telling the player he needed to add them together. Would make for a better puzzle, and a lot less tedious repetition at every mission do-over.